At the Open Government Days (Open Government Tagen) that took place in Munich at the end of 2014, Vienna (Austria) reiterated that the city’s Open Government policy was at the heart of its digital strategy.
Vienna Chief Information Officer Ulrike Huemer explained her Government 4.0 vision in her opening speech (PDF), in which participation, transparency and collaboration are the three basic pillars. She said that Open Government aims at encouraging participation, with the overarching aim of facilitating decision making, transparency and cooperation. It also plays a role in the economy and innovation with the emergence of commercial uses. Finally, Open Government promotes the use of data by public administrations and provides more consistent processes, she said.
As part of its Open Government policy, Vienna has set up an Open Data portal, revised in August 2013. In total, 246 data sets have been published and 154 applications use them. Among the applications presented, the CIO showed an application that geo-locates toilets in the city through augmented reality, a parking ticket system and a mobile app for tourism. Ms. Huemer explained that the Open Data portal illustrates “the success of the Open Government initiative of the city of Vienna”.
A journey to a "city-as-service"
She also presented the city’s digital agenda to make Vienna a digital metropolis (Digitalcity.wien). This strategy aims at making Vienna a Smart City, using and optimising technologies in the areas of mobility, health, education and all public services. One of the objectives is to implement an appropriate IT infrastructure.
Vienna has also deployed the www.digitaleagenda.wien site to ask citizens about the proper role of IT in the city. In total, 5 questions were put to citizens and 2,451 votes were collected, As part of her presentation, Ulrike Huemer asked: "How should the ICT infrastructure of the City of Vienna be designed in the future?"; "How will ICT change administration in the future?" and "What concerns arise for you from Increasing the digitisation of the Vienna city administration?”, among other questions. The ideas generated for the Digital Agenda in Vienna are in Open Data format.
Several working groups have been set up to determine the digital roadmap of the city (the digital infrastructure, services to citizens, economic development or IT in education and research).